Ordinary diners who take part in our annual survey each spring review restaurants and leave their feedback, but we also ask them to score restaurants from 1-5 on food, service and ambience. Harden’s then uses an average of these scores and measures them against other establishments in the same price bracket to arrive at the ratings published in the guide and online.

Snippets from some of your feedback may end up in the overall Harden’s review, noticeably they appear in “double quotation marks”. The rest of our pithy, bite-sized restaurant summaries are compiled by analysing the survey data and extracting recurring themes, looking at whether or not a venue was nominated in any of our categories – like ‘favourite’ or ‘most overpriced’ – and, of course, looking at the ratings for food, service and ambience.

The Harden’s ratings indicate that a restaurant is:

exceptional very good good average poor

All reviews are compiled from survey comments and ratings, without any regard for our own personal opinions, except in cases where restaurants are too new to have been included in the survey. If you want the editors’ view on new restaurants in London you can find them in our Editors’ Review section.

The Narrow

Gordon Ramsay’s Docklands pub

Harden's
survey result

Summary

The “fantastic river location and views” at Gordon Ramsay’s Limehouse pub have never in all the many years he’s owned it been matched by its kitchen. No-one says its dire nowadays, but feedback on the “standard gastropub food” is very middling – a “very average offering from Ramsay, this”.

Price

£57

££

Food

2

Average

Service

2

Average

Ambience

4

Very Good

* Based on a three course dinner, half a bottle of wine, coffee, cover charge, service and VAT.

Summary

Is Gordon Ramsay’s Limehouse pub finally, after all these years, starting to live up to its “lovely riverside setting”? Even a reporter who can’t resist a swipe at the “****” food admits that “the building and location make it great for a family-and-friends lunch” and all other feedback this year praises “tasty food at quite reasonable prices”.

Price

£57

££

Food

3

Good

Service

3

Good

Ambience

4

Very Good

* Based on a three course dinner, half a bottle of wine, coffee, cover charge, service and VAT.

Summary

Gordon Ramsay’s potentially wonderful waterfront Limehouse pub has never found its mojo, but it avoided the usual drubbing from diners this year and achieved OK ratings, despite still sometimes seeming “expensive” and “disappointing”.

Price

£56

££

Food

2

Average

Service

2

Average

Ambience

3

Good

* Based on a three course dinner, half a bottle of wine, coffee, cover charge, service and VAT.

Summary

Gordon Ramsay, please either ditch or sort out this under-performing Limehouse pub – with its “laid-back” style and smashing views from the conservatory, it could be a Docklands destination, but too often its standards are “truly dreadful”.

Price

£50

££

Food

1

Poor

Service

1

Poor

Ambience

3

Good

* Based on a three course dinner, half a bottle of wine, coffee, cover charge, service and VAT.

For 28 years we've been curating reviews of the UK's most notable restaurant. This year diners have submitted over 50,000 reviews to create the most authoritative restaurant guide in the UK.

Have you eaten at The Narrow?

Restaurant details

Childrens FacilitiesHighchair, Portions

Outside TablesYes

Private Rooms20

Covers108

Childrens Minimun AgeUnder 14 not allowed in bar area

The Narrow Restaurant Diner Reviews

Reviews of The Narrow Restaurant in E14, London by users of Hardens.com. Also see the editors review of The Narrow restaurant.

Samuel W

Some dishes are exceptional and others more...

Reviewed 8 months, 24 days ago

"Some dishes are exceptional and others more standard gastro pub. However I cannot fault the service. The maitre D always makes us feel so welcome even when with kids and a dog in tow. Can’t do enough to please. Last minute walk in also accommodated where possible. "

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Harden's says...

It must be hard being Gordon Ramsay. Filming in California one minute. Establishing a flagship NYC restaurant the next. And all the while: maintaining standards at his London restaurant empire; servicing a demanding media profile, on both side of the Pond; and even running the odd marathon.

Oh, and now establishing a gastropub empire too, the first of which is at these new Limehouse premises (where the sign, a hang-over from a former regime, still says: "The Narrow Street Pub & Dining Room"). 'Gastropub' is, however, a forbidden term. This, we are officially told, is just a pub which does good food.

Well, initial impressions are certainly favourable. This is a handsome and understated riverside building. It has good outside space and impressive views. And the affable staff try hard, too.

If you just drop in though, you'll probably find the small river-view dining room - with its short and homely English menu - all booked up. And, no, you can't sample the full range of dining room fare in the bar because it's "early days", and they're "very anxious to get the standards right " ("with the critics coming in"). Soon, they hope it will be "more relaxed", and you may - just 'may', mind - be allowed, for example, to sample a restaurant-menu pudding in the bar.

So, when it does get "more relaxed", what are the standards going to be like? Like so many Ramsay spin-offs, good but not memorable, if our early sampling of the bar fare - a very restricted selection mainly from the restaurant menu, itself very short - is any indication. But that's not the big question - even if they do keep standards up, and prices down, how is a place on such a modest scale going to make any real contribution to the swelling Ramsay coffers?